


What Dreams May Come

by laideur



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: 3GAR, Afterlife, Confessions of love, Death, First Kiss, Heaven, Hell, M/M, Suicide, Watson POV, dream - Freeform, h/c, what dreams may come
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:16:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laideur/pseuds/laideur
Summary: Watson dies and goes to heaven. Holmes doesn’t. Irredemable hurt/comfort angst cliche soup. Based loosely on the movie What Dreams May Come, which I saw once, over a decade ago.





	

***********

I died. 

It was over quickly. The room was dark and quiet as we crouched in wait for the criminal. Suddenly, a beam of light burst from the trap door in the floor. And immediately afterward, a loud crack and a searing pain. A shout, another gunshot, running steps. My heart pounded in my ears. 

“Watson, say you aren’t hurt. Say you aren’t—“ His hands were on my body and when they drew away they were red with blood. 

Red hands, shaking. White face, eyes wide. 

“No, nonono. Hold on, just hold on, John, please.” 

Cracked voice, tears that shone in the lamplight. 

I smiled. I tried to take his hand, but my body would not obey. I tried to speak, but my lungs would not draw air. 

I heard him sob desperately, beyond words. There were no more words for either of us. I only wanted to tell him.

I wanted to say - 

***********

“More tea, John?” 

I am seated at the table with Mary and my brother, Henry. The French windows are open and the lace curtains billow in the gentle breeze that wafts the scent of flowers from the garden, where the trellised bushes, heavy with blossom, bow and sway and scatter a confetti of petals into the clear spring air. 

A half-formed phrase about the loveliness of roses flits through my mind, but it is swept away on the breeze. 

Mary, warm and radiant as the sun in her white linen dress, pours the tea and I lean back in my chair, content. 

***********

We walk along the shore, gazing out at the sea. It is flecked with the sails of ships. Henry and I take turns naming them. Gulls wheel and cry overhead.

The waves crash on the rocks, sending up a white spray that casts brief rainbows on the chalky cliffs. i think briefly about the properties of water, how beautiful and complex they are. Another thought I cannot quite place, like the memory of a dream upon waking, skirts along the edge of my mind. A drop of water…. It is gone.

***********

We sit together on a hill above the cliffs as the sun slides into the sea. Henry lies down in the lavender, chin in his hands, like a young boy. I remember us as children. We were children, once. Somehow we came to be separated. I should be able to remember what happened. The past evades me like a curl of smoke. 

“Mary, what did we do yesterday?” 

“Don’t you remember?” 

I turn to look at her. She is in the very bloom of youth, picked out in hues of gold and rose, beautiful and vibrant as the day we met. 

“I was in London.”

“Don’t worry about it, John.”

The sun is an orange ball, barely kissing the ocean. It has been there for a very long time. Henry sits up and looks from me to Mary. There is not a strand of gray in my elder brother’s hair. 

For a tense moment, I stare at them. “Am I dreaming?” 

Henry quirks his eyebrow and smiles. “Well, according to some philosophies—“

“You both died. How are you here?” 

I frowned. 

***********

Later, after many questions, we gazed over the pink, motionless sunset. 

Mary said, “I watched you, you know. I have been watching for years.” 

“Can we see all that? People who are alive?”

“Look down there,” said Henry. 

“The ocean?”

“Yes, look.” 

The ocean was no longer. Instead it was a great blue void, and as I looked, I could see roads and buildings emerge, like I was gazing down at an infinitely detailed map. It was no map, but London itself. It was covered in snow and the streetlamps and windows were picked out in spots of warm light. 

“Time passes differently here. It has been a full six months down there, since you died.”

I could see everything in the smallest detail, if I concentrated. I found Baker Street, and 221. It was like looking at a dollhouse. The windows in our flat were dark. 

“Is Holmes down there?” 

Mary took my hand. “I was so glad for you when he returned.” 

I looked around at her and smiled, but her face was somber. 

“Can we find him?” 

“He isn’t there,” said Henry.

“Well where is he?”

A look passed between them. 

Mary said, “A few weeks after you died, he died also.”

This news shocked me, but in an instant I was full of joyful expectation. “So he’s in heaven then?” I asked hopefully.

“It’s more complicated than that,” said Henry. “Someone can only find their way to heaven if they die in good conscience. Others can become…lost along the way.” 

I stared at them, aghast, waiting. 

“He took his own life,” whispered Mary. “He was so wracked by guilt and despair it swallowed him up and he couldn’t escape.”

“That’s impossible! Holmes loved life as much as any man.”

“He loved you more.” Mary looked at me with a profound sadness in her eyes. sadness, yes, but not a hint of jealousy of censure. 

“If he’s not in heaven, does that mean….No, I can’t believe it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Henry. “Look down there. Look beyond. That is where he is.” 

I looked again, at the London that was so close and yet a million miles away, and as I looked a black fog rolled in. It was not as I had ever imagined hell, but nor was it heaven, or the living world. It became a city devoid of color, lit by invisible stars, gray and cold as a cinder. 

That Holmes should be in such a dark and desolate prison was unthinkable. “He can’t be there. There must be a way to get him out, otherwise there is no justice in the universe. Tell me that is possible.”

“It is very difficult.” 

“Why have stories of such deeds if there is no hope?” 

***********

A great chasm stretched before us, standing on the edge of that cliff that had once been heaven. A wide dark cloud separated us from the darkness of another world. All around us was still and windless, and the strange slanting light of the sun cast our shadows long. 

I looked at Mary. She was weeping gently, but smiling. “Be careful.” 

I nodded, and then I started running. I ran as I never had before, as if I expected to grow wings, down through the rising mist toward the end of the cliff. The ground dropped out beneath me, and still somehow I went on. The clouds rushed past me in a great gale that grew colder and colder. 

The cloud became, colder, darker, thicker, like the worst sort of fog. It stung my throat and eyes and swirled around me in black flecked whorls. I felt the ground beneath my feet again. 

A wan sour light filtered down through the clouds. I looked about and found I was surrounded by gray smoke-stained buildings. Strange bowed shadows moved past me in the fog. I squinted at the numbers above the door. 221. 

The front hall was black, as if ravaged by fire. It swallowed me like a dark mouth. Ash ballooned in clouds as I climbed the stairs. 

I paused at the landing. I did not know what I would find inside. I was not even certain Holmes would be inside. I pushed the door open. It was dark inside and bitterly cold. The house creaked as if caught in a storm. I saw him: a thin, hunched figure kneeling on the floor in front of the cold hearth. It took me a moment to realize our armchairs were both gone. His back was to me, but I could hear soft keening noises as he shook his head and ran his pale narrow hands through his hair.

I approached him slowly. The floor was bare and the boards groaned beneath me. He was sitting amidst a rat’s nest of papers, crumpled and disarranged, turning them over restlessly. 

I crouched next to him. “Holmes? Sherlock? Can you see me?” 

His head snapped up. His face was dirty and his eyes were blank, as I had occasionally seen him when in the grips of morphine. 

“What? Who are you? How did you get in?” His voice was uneasy and his eyes wandered without focus.

“Don’t you recognize me? It’s your Watson.”

“No, no, I have to solve this. There’s too many. Where has it gone…” I had never seen his mind so disordered. He blinked as if he couldn’t see clearly. There was a spilled inkwell on the floor, seeping into the papers and the knees of his trousers. As I looked closer, I realized there were no words on the paper, only black scratches. All the papers were the same. A chill ran up my spine. I took a book off the shelf. If was filled with black scratches. 

Holmes continued to whine, rustling his papers. “It’s gone, it’s gone. I’ll never…”

I looked around the room. All the pictures on the walls were gone. They were only dark smudges in frames. Even the pattern on the wallpaper seemed blurred and shapeless. So this is what his hell was: a world of impenetrable confusion. 

I knelt in front of him again and put my hands on his shoulders. “Holmes, listen to me—“ 

There was a sudden gust of frigid air. It was coming from the crack beneath his bedroom door. He shivered and looked at the door in cold terror. 

“Is there something in there?” I pressed. “Holmes, please.

“Oh, it’s gone!” He put his face in his hands and wailed like a lost soul.

I entered his room with a harsh squeal of rusty hinges. It was gutted and black like the rest of the house. His bed also seemed to have the same charcoal stain of shadow upon it. As I approached, I realized what it was: blood. The pillow was covered with dried blood. A faint brown-red splatter was on the wall behind it. 

A tightness gripped my chest, a suffocating sorrow that closed my throat and burned my eyes like smoke. “Oh, Holmes,” I whispered. How desperate must he have been in those last days? Was there nothing to tether him to the world? 

Something caught my eye. On the table beside the bed was a picture. The weak light that filtered through the grubby window caught on its glass. I recognized it instantly. It was a small photograph of us both, a calling card I had had the notion to produce to advertise Holmes’ services. It must have been fifteen years old. I glanced up at the wall above his bed. All the portraits of the criminals were defaced, like the pictures in the sitting room. 

I picked it up gingerly. In this mad, desperate, sorrowful place, something so ordinary seemed unreal. I ran my fingers over the dusty glass. As much as my mind reeled away from the thought, I knew why it had survived. It was the last thing he saw. 

In his final act of despair he sought to join me in death. 

And it had brought him here. 

The wind howled worse than ever. The window rattled and I feared the house would crumble like a burnt matchstick. I took the photograph and rushed back into the sitting room. I crouched before Holmes and drew his hands away from his face. I held the photograph up to him. 

“Look at this. Do you remember? Do you remember me?” 

He reached out his hands for it. How frail they looked, bone white and shaking and flecked with ink.

“Please, try to remember.”

His eyes were still unfocussed, but he blinked and knit his brows as if concentrating very hard.

“I love you, Holmes!” I cried desperately, throwing my arms around him. “I love you, and it wasn’t your fault that I died. I would give my life for you a hundred times over. Please, my love, come back to me.”

He raised his face, slowly, and it seemed as if he were walking out of a bank of fog, or through a series of veils. I saw the light of recognition in his eyes. And at that moment the house may have fallen down around us because all I knew was his sudden embrace and his clear voice.

“Watson, I remember. Oh, my dear.” 

**** 

Holmes dissolved in my arms. My hands were curled around air. I was lying down, but I felt like I was rising, swimming up through icy water. My whole body ached and my head throbbed. I opened my eyes to blinding light. 

There was a sudden flurry beside me and a dip in the side of the bed. I felt a warm hand on my cheek, and as I blinked I saw Holmes’ concerned face. 

“Watson? Can you hear me?” 

I tried to answer him, but could only manage a rough croak. 

“Don’t force yourself to speak. Here, drink some water.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and held a glass to my lips. We were in his bedroom and I was lying in his bed. He had evidently dragged his armchair in from the sitting room and it was stood beside the bed. On the table were a pile of books and candle stubs and, tucked behind, the picture of the two of us. 

“What happened?” I whispered. 

He put down the glass behind him but his arm was still around me. “That villain shot you and when you fell you cracked your head. You haven’t opened your eyes for two days. I’m so relieved you’re awake.” From the plum colored rings around his eyes and sallow skin I could tell he had made up for my unconsciousness by not allowing himself a moment's sleep. His smile was bright and lively, though. 

“I talked to you. I hoped you could hear me in there.” He seemed possessed by the need to keep touching me to reassure himself that I was alive and awake. I was already feeling disoriented and as his fingers gently stroked my cheek it did not make it any easier to focus. “I’ve been in absolute hell this whole time.”

I turned to face him, surprised. If he had said this to me in the hours of his vigil, perhaps my dream had come from listening to him.

“If you hadn’t woken up, I—I don’t know what I would have done,” he lied. I knew it was a lie. His eyes welled with tears — unshed tears for a forestalled fate. I could not bear to see such pain and strangled, desperate affection. Weakly, I raised my arms and pulled him down beside me. He buried his face in my neck and I felt his hot tears upon my skin.

“Oh, Holmes,” I whispered. I combed my fingers through his silky hair and inhaled the scent of him; I knew this, at least, was no dream. “Holmes, listen to me. It was not your fault. I would say I forgive you, but there is nothing to forgive.” I looked into his tired, streaming, beautiful eyes. “ I would do it again in a heartbeat. I love you. Don’t you dare look surprised at that. I’m sorry it took me so long to say. I love you.” 

He nodded and swallowed. It seemed to take all his strength to get his voice under control, but it was with a soft smile and joyous eyes that he finally said, “I love you, too.” 

**** 

Coming back to life is almost more painful than dying. For the rest of the afternoon I laid in bed, unaccountably exhausted by two days of doing nothing. Holmes continued to fuss over me but abandoned his chair for lying beside me on the bed. it was narrow, but his warmth and closeness was a welcome comfort. 

“What did you say to me, while I was asleep?” 

“I read to you. I have heard that the sound of anothers voice, in such circumstances, is helpful. I tried to read the Strand but gave it up as a bad job, and tried a couple of your ridiculous seafaring books. I also had a monograph about arson.” 

“Of course you did.”

“Could you hear me at all?”

I stared at the ceiling, considering. “I dreamed I saw Mary. And my brother.” 

“Oh?” 

“And I saw you, but you couldn’t see me.” 

He props himself up on his elbows and cups my face in his hands. “I see you now.” 

“I dreamed I was in Heaven.” 

“This is heaven,” he says, and kisses me.


End file.
